xl2000 SAVE AS ".dbf" not Backward Compatible

[sjpistolesi]

xl2000 to (dBASE III) .dbf:

Environment: Office and Windows 2000.

Cannot save as dBASE III format and have the resulting file be readable by dBASE or CLIPPER.

Before you get into "why not upgrade," please know that we are reengineering the legacy systems ... but until they are ready to ship, MUST be able to continue support of the old system's databases.

xl2000's SAVE AS function flat does not work ... there's something in the resulting file that prevents it being usable by the legacy software.

Has anyone faced this dilemma and have a workaround, other that manual manipulation using ACCESS file links???

Sandy

 

[xlhelp]

Hi,

I am not going to be much help, but the following articles at Microsoft amy shed some more light:

Q214146, Q214131, Q290864 and Q214064

HTH

Indu

 

[IForgot]

As a Foxpro (essentially a SuperSet of dBase III) programmer who has successfully faced this issue MANY times, let me say that Excel 2000 WILL write DBF files fine, BUT you will need to be careful in how you make the save.

* You will need to enter the first Excel Row so that it will represent the Fields of the DBF file.
* Next you will need to highlight ONLY the cells which are appropriate and which have "Fields" defined. Make certain to include Row1.
* You will need to do your Save As... in the proper DBF format -- DBF 3 (dbase III) (*.dbf) for the greatest compatibility.

If this does not help, for more responses you might want to consider posting your question on either:
forum182 Foxpro (version 1 thru 2.6)
forum290 dBase

Good Luck,